UB3RG33K

First of all, it’s been a while, I’ve (up until now) been very strong at ignoring temptation as I’ve been sticking to the ‘No New Shiny for a Year Challenge‘. This weekend I unfortunately had a moment of weakness, or one could say, I was a drunken opportunity.

So, my Onkyo TX-SR606 amplifier has done me proud over the years, but I’ve been hit with a know HDMI board fault. It’s been repaired once, but it’s on its way out again, so decided it’s time to replace it. Now first of all, I decided to replace this with a lot cheaper model which had the same features, plus a few more. This is the Pioneer VSX922, which I will blog about once it’s turned up.

So while drunk at the weekend, and deciding to buy with a new amp as the 606 was cutting out far too often, I pointed out the fact that this amp is 7.2, meaning it supports two subwoofers, and drunkenly suggested to C that we get one. This may have been the beer talking, but she replied ‘I don’t know why we don’t have a sub downstairs, we could do with more bass’. Before she’d finish the sentence, I was back on my machine, and throwing it into the basket (hence drunken opportunity).

Now I have to confess, I did a drunken fail. I ordered the sub based on a single measurement, the width. At the side of my cabinet I have a 250mm square gap, which would have house a small sub nicely, so read that the width was 230mm and ordered. Now the sub has turned up, I realise I should have checked the other dimensions, as this is a beast at 230mm wide, 344mm deep and 408mm high…and guess what, it doesn’t fit. Not to worry, there are plenty of other places for it to go.

The sub itself has a front facing duct, with down firing sub. It has a simple blue light on the front, with the Pioneer logo in white letters, making it very inconspicuous.

My currently Onkyo TX-SR606 also supports sub out, so to test, I plugged it in, re-run the calibration, and after throwing my normal test films at it (Black Hawk Down, and Star Wars: Episode 1 – Pod Race), wow! what a difference it makes. My Eltax CONCEPT 400 front speakers have a lot of bass already, but this little baby takes it to the next level. I dropped it right down to the lowest setting of 33Hz and tried Crysis on the Xbox 360, as I know just how bassy that was using just the Eltax CONCEPT 400 front speakers, and this had really made the base crisper.

Coincidentally, my next door neighbour is currently in the process of moving out, which means I should get a good couple of weeks to try this out and see just have bassy this is.

I would love to be able to give you comparisons between this and other amps, tell you how the crispness compares, but I have nothing to compare against, all I can tell you is, in my front room, tucked away in a corner is the not so small sub, that has added a lot of bass to my already glorious sounding sound system.

Specs from Pioneers site below

Driver16cm cone woofer

EnclosureFront Duct bass-reflex

Line Input Sensitivity/Impedance (100 Hz)300 mV / 47 kΩ

Frequency Range33 – 700 Hz Hz

Power Handling160W Peak / 100W RMS

Dimensions (W x H x D)230 x 408 x 344 mm mm

Weight6.5 kg kg

Power RequirementsAC 220-240 V, 50/60 Hz

Power Consumption (in use / standby)25 W

Unbeknown to me, the courier turned up with 2 boxes, one with the sub and one with the S11 5.1 speaker pack, not sure if this was a mistake or not. The speakers are featured in the manual, but there was no mention of these on the website I bought them from. Good thing is, I’ve been looking for a new centre and surround speakers for the bedroom, and these will do nicely. Finally the remaining two satellite speakers will work really well as the ‘front high’ speakers for the new amp.